Today we present a splendid cornucopia of wisdom and help.
Jen Arnall-Culliford, she of the Boost Your Knitting program featuring new techniques paired with excellent patterns, explores a technique that appears to be sort of impossible.
Brioche.
How can this be knitting?
This is one of the most versatile, dazzling techniques in all knittingdom, and with Jen at our side, it’s also completely attainable.
Not only does Jen give us the introductory video tutorial up top, she has created four additional videos that explain nuances of the brioche technique as well as cast-on and cast-off methods that work well with brioche.
Here are all five videos.
Brioche Knitting
Increasing in Brioche Knitting
Decreasing in Brioche Knitting
Italian 2-color Cast-on Method
Tubular cast-off Method
This is next-level knitting—full of surprises, and a style of knitting that is appearing all over the place these days. You really will open up your knitting horizon by spending a little time with Jen. As always, she is clear as glass about what to do. It’s one of those techniques that rewards a bit of practice. It’s just so beautiful.
Carol Feller’s Design: The Perfect Brioche Starter
The Flying Leaves Scarf is glorious—it uses Carol’s very own yarn, Stolen Stitches Nua. And the design gives us a lot of opportunity to learn the rhythm of brioche knitting.
Seriously, isn’t this astonishing? This is where you will feel extremely clever as you get the hang of it.
In the MDK Shop
Brioche is such fun, whether you use the yarn over or the knit 1 below technique, & not all that difficult once the penny drops. Hard not to love the warm squooshy fabric it produces.
I think people psych themselves out about brioche. I recently took a class because I’d heard it was hard, and instead found it very straightforward to just follow the instructions. Yet the majority of the class, most of whom had been knitting far longer than I had, were clearly struggling. It seemed like they had a hard time getting past their long-ingrained habits with knitting— so the issues were paying attention to when you turn the work vs. slide back, or doing regular yarnovers insteak of thinking of sl1yo as its own beast.
That said, I appreciate that Boost Your Knitting did tuck stitches first. Make the Bramen cowl from March I think, and then brioche seems like a natural next step.
I’m currently obsessed with brioche! I’m almost at the “this isn’t brioche so I won’t knit it” stage….
I keep trying and trying. I have watched the video and gone step by step. I have watched Stephen West explain it and I keep making the same mistake every time. It just doesn’t look right. So I will try again tomorrow and I will succeed.
I haven’t yet tried Brioche but hope to soon. I love your videos and have learned so much, but I really do wish that you would use yarn that contrasts with the wood background. It was difficult to see the stitches on the brioche video.